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Blogging Your Brand

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

If you are an entrepreneur or even if you are a larger
company, having a good qualified opt-in list is increasingly becoming a
foundational marketing program. For those focused more on online sales it is
your lifeblood. There are a lot of people out there discussing how to build a
list, here are a few things I have learned using some of the obvious and also incorporating
more strategies using my credibility branding model.

Blogging:

Blogging is a great way to establish your brand by using
content to establish expertise and personality. I call it a networking and
branding building platform. Your web site is a brochure, your blog is you own
personal magazine that can illustrate your point and show what you know. The networking part is leveraging the power of
your voice and the audience you are building to improve your relationship with influencers
who by association can improve your brand. Here are a few hints to do that:

Re-post articles of those you want endorsements from or influencers you would like to form relationships with and tell them you reposted one of their works

Do a review of these same people content and blogs and ;et them know you did so

Ask readers to join your email list / blogger list

Blogging is a great way to drive a new audience to your
newsletter list, if they like your blog they want more.

Squeeze pages and
Bonus Gifts:

Squeeze pages are designed to build your list; you give away
free stuff on the squeeze page in exchange for an email address. I recently
created one for my credibility branding audit (you can check out here).
You can use is as a broader strategy; start with a squeeze page to build a
qualified list for a specific product. Then offer a phased approach of phased
products to that audience.

Try out social
networking sites

There are a number of social networking site that will drive
traffic and if done right can drive the right traffic to create new
subscribers, here are a couple:

List Bandit - List building networks; one I recently cam across is List Bandit. It is a group of like mined individuals building lists on top of each other, it is worth signing up and trying it. It is a little confusing to start but you get a series of emails that start to walk you through how it works. Also a
hint… at the beginning they offer you a special deal that only comes up at the time of signing up they are right and it is a good deal if you can afford it.

Stumbleupon
is a downloadable toolbar that embeds into your browser and gives you the
chance to surf through thousands of excellent pages that have been stumbled upon by other web-users. You can drive traffic by telling the right audience about something that is relevant to them (maybe your blog).

Del.icio.us is a place to store your bookmarks in one place, bookmark things for yourself and friends and check out what other people are bookmarking. The key is to drive people to your bookmarks
and also get onto other peoples lists. This is another one of those credibility branding things, if you can get on an influencers list it drives traffic and builds your credibility by association.

Twitter a mini blog based on only 40 characters per post based on the premise “what are you doing” build a following here too.

Squidoo build a page about your passions create a specific lens of your product here is mine. You
can also start you own groups, I started one that is starting to slowly build.

MyBlogLog, one of my favorites this is a blogging networking community. Bloggers are
influencers and are ahead of the curve, MyBlogLog allows you to meet and interact with fellow bloggers. A great site where you meat great professional friends that are doing the same thing as you. I have gotten many newsletter subscribers from here and fans and I have become fans of
some pretty awesome people.

There are a lot more… please leave comments with ones you have found to work and how they work.

Pop Ups

The days of pop ups are waning, however apparently they
still work. The key is to have it pop up at the end of their stay as they are clicking
away and offer a gift to incent them giving their email.

Bottom line with all of this is to go after the audiences
that make sense for your product don’t get an email address just to get an
email address. Use these practices to drive a pre-qualified audience to you
products. Use them to further establish your credibility and to get those
points of credibility across in your messaging. Be careful not to get
distracted by these tactics by doing too much of this and not running your business.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

I saw something today on MyBlogLog.
A member used a very famous celebrities name to entice a click through. Once at
the member’s site it was obvious that it was just a ploy and the site delivered
on the ongoing brand identify of that ploy. “I tricked you to get here, now I
will likely trick you to sell you something,” is what that particular brand
stands for. This type of clever traffic building tactic is impacting your brand
every time you use it. If you really want to create an interesting effect on
users, don’t be lazy and use obviously manipulative tactics, create something
worthwhile visiting, leverage influencers to help you get the word out and
build credibility through third party endorsements. Use sound SEO tactics of
keyword relevance and proper back end coding, network and build your links with
an integrity that represents your brand.

I also noticed as I purused the blogisphere there are these
complicated link building practices among bloggers. My philosophy is don’t link
to something unless it is in alignment with your readers interest. Otherwise
what is the point of the traffic. You want traffic that is targeted and
qualified right? You want visitors that are going to eventually buy something
from you don’t you? Traffic for the sake of traffic is not going to help you
over the long run even if you are going for Ad Sense links or building
circulation to sell advertising. The target audience won’t link if they are
driven to you for the wrong reasons from the wrong blog. Advertisers will
eventually catch on that the traffic is not authentic and doesn’t deliver the
demographics or the content focus they were looking for. Even if you do
increase your Google and Technorati rankings there is a risk to your brand
perception by using these tactics. I am not saying don’t do interesting link
building programs… but do them with a brand aligning publicity hook or with the
right partners one who will deliver the right demographics and have a quality
site to start with.

So what does your brand stand for? Think about this for a
moment, write it down. It may surprise you. Now look at your traffic building
or offline marketing strategies, are they in alignment with what your brand
stands for? Look at you blog itself, does it speak to your brand? If not make
adjustments, go back to credibility marketing basics, find the points of
credibility in your company or product then promote those and use your brand to
highlight it. This will build long term loyal customers not fly by link
throughs.

For bloggers, your customers are your brand so be careful
who you invite.

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